Over promising results and thus creating unrealistic expectations is one of the biggest mistakes pastors make. In my thirteen and a half years of working in the stewardship field I have seen this mistake played out from large to small churches. Pastors and church leaders attempting to convince the congregation to approve moving forward with some initiative almost always over promise the results. It is not that they are being disingenuous it is simply that they always tend to project the best possible outcome. As such they over reach and over promise.
Here is a typical example. Let’s say that you have an annual operating budget of $400K a year. The project that you want to build is going to cost from $2.5 million to $3.0 million. How can you explain to the congregation that you have a plan that will help you achieve raising that amount? Typically church leaders employ capital stewardship campaigns as a means to generate revenue. In doing so they tend to promise an amount to be raised that is at least twice to three times their annual operating budget. They also if they are relocating talk of the sale of the existing property to help pay for the amount needed to raise.
That sounds like a good plan of action and it is. However the danger lies in what those leaders promise in terms of what can be raised. They typically over estimate how much their capital campaign will bring in and they over estimate how much their current property will sell for. Let’s analyze the two areas.
Capital Campaign Results
I blame my industry in part for the mistakes that pastors and leaders are making in over promising campaign results. For years my industry told churches that you could raise one and a half to three times your annual operating expense in a capital campaign. It was a sales pitch that no one ever studied to find out if the averages were true. Most churches never heard the low average and always projected the high three times average. Some churches do indeed raise that percentage and more. However they are always accomplished with major gifts. If your church is comprised of mainly blue collar workers your pledge to budget average will be much lower.
As a result of the recession pledging is lower than in past years. We have seen this in the campaigns we have done and in talking to others in the industry they are seeing the same thing. Yet to the shame of my industry most companies still talk about helping you raise between one and a half and three times your budget. Those inflated numbers which I doubt ever were the norm are now even further from reality. Frankly the range is about one to two times your annual operating expense. So, be careful what you promise will come in. It will in all probability be less than you think.
Selling Your Church Property
Once a pastor said to me, “Our realtor says that our building is worth $5 million.” He was counting on that amount to help him pay for a large part of the relocation. My reply was, “Your building is worth what someone is going to write you a check for it.” Churches seldom ever bring in the amount they think they will. On top of that the church you are moving out of will have a limited number of perspective buyers interested in purchasing it. In nearly every relocation that I have been involved with selling the old property took much longer than expected and brought in far less than anticipated. Again, be careful what you promise.
Why Is This Important?
Your integrity is what is at stake. While members might forgive your over exuberance they will remember what you said. The next time you get up to cast a vision or give plans it will be in their minds. If you continually over promise at the least the will tune you out and at most your integrity will come into question.
Project a Realistic Plan
I agree that you need to advance a plan of action of how you will pay for whatever it is your are doing. However, I always counsel that it is better to be upfront with your congregation fully explaining to them all the costs and actually projecting the high side of estimates. Get all the sticker shock out of the way. Then provide them with a realistic plan for financing the project. This requires a lot of careful thought and planning. It is not something that we recommend you launch into on your own.
Most of our work now is done on the front end of campaigns helping churches accurately assess what they capabilities are. We then help them craft together a realistic and believable plan of action to present to the congregation. The project gets accomplished, the leaders are held in higher esteem and God’s work gets done.
If you are in the midst of a project the advice I give you is two fold. First, be careful what you promise. Church members will remember for a long time what you say. Secondly, don’t go it alone. Get help from a stewardship firm that knows how to guide you through the process and thus protect you from needless mistakes. I happen to know of a good one, us!
Source: The Charis Group. Photo by dbking.
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About Mark Brooks
